


The Toxic Estate

by zemph147



Series: Dangerous Girls [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Everybody is gender swapped except John and Seb, F/F, Lesbian Sherlock Holmes, M/M, Multi, Murder, Sequel, fem!lock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 07:11:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2959004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zemph147/pseuds/zemph147
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate title: Holding Hands at the Gates of Sodom.</p><p>Victoria Trevor invites Sherlock and John out to her estate to solve the mystery of her murdered husband. A ridiculous case fic sequel to Dangerous Girls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This, like me, is sexy garbage. 
> 
> No beta, no brit-pick, pretty OOC, and I'm pretty sure it's non canon compliant with my own damn canon from Dangerous Girls (not sure if I even mentioned Mycroft, but she might have been a man in that, and a woman in this?). This fic will probably make more sense if you have read Dangerous Girls, but then again, it might not make sense to anyone at all.
> 
> Pretty sure I got everyone's pronouns right, but it's easy to slip when you're reading fic with them all as dudes, and writing it with them all as chicks, so if any of the lady characters accidentally get referred to as he/him, it's my bad, please point it out to me. All other grammar mistakes, and there may be many, can go uncommented on. I'm almost positive everything is in the right tense, but no promises.
> 
> In this 'verse, there is no Mary pregnancy, I left her death deliberately ambiguous, and I guess there is no Irene, because I always forget about her when I write.
> 
> Still no real Sherlock/John, though I tagged it that way for one scene. It's all platonic here, folks.

There’s a hazy memory that smells like poppies and iron, that feels like cool silk sheets against naked, sweat-drenched skin, that breathes slowly in the hot, smoky air, streaked with sunlight that could be either dawn or dusk, not that time matters there. It’s a memory Sherlock has buried deep in her mind palace, between the Not Good files and the things that hurt too much. It is a memory that has very nearly been deleted, clings on only as a dreamy sensory imprint, followed by a vague empty feeling that something important has been lost. 

There are many memories Sherlock has deleted, and she regrets how this one lingers, because if she had simply deleted it, the whole thing would not have flooded back when she steps into the flat and smells Victoria’s perfume.

John’s face has that slight twist to it, the unhappy one he gets when he is reminded there are many things Sherlock has kept from him; continues to keep from him. It is unpleasant. They belong to each other, but they do not own each other. Sherlock curls her lip at him, and his face relaxes into a petulant exhaustion.

“You have a visitor,” John says.

“I am aware,” Sherlock replies. 

Victoria’s lipstick is still dark, her hair still down in long, soft curls. She’s lost weight, recently, her clothes don’t quite fit, though they are expensive, and bought within the last year. Her nails are acrylic, probably to cover nervous chewing, by the state of her ragged cuticles. Her shoes are brand new stilettos, tall, too tall, so tall that when she stands, she is taller than Sherlock., taller than many men would be comfortable standing beside. Her near empty tea cup clinks against the table.

“He’s dead,” Sherlock says.

“Could you tell by counting the wrinkles in my forehead?” Victoria says. Her smile is soft. She studies Sherlock, taking her in. 

“You wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t,” Sherlock says.

Victoria crosses the room and takes Sherlock’s hands into her own. They are soft, free of calluses, scars faded. It has been a long time since Victoria Trevor has fired a gun.

“You can’t even pretend to be happy to see me?” Victoria asks.

Sherlock steals a glance at John, who is watching them intently. Jealousy ticks at the corner of his mouth. It takes Sherlock by surprise. John’s affection for her has grown, but she thought his attraction towards her was long dead when they began their platonic, semi-nude bed sharing, and their platonic, very nude, bathroom sharing. John’s jealousy settles as a nasty little bug in Sherlock’s stomach. 

“You met John, I assume,” Sherlock says, pulling her hands away from Victoria’s. “Despite appearances, I’m not fucking him, though you’ve probably already come to that conclusion. What you would have discovered after about an hour of ridiculous pleasantries, which I intend to avoid at all costs, is that I was fucking his wife, consensually, before she shot me, quite non-consensually, and I nearly bled to death. But that’s of little concern to you, considering you were nowhere to be found the last time I died.”

“Oh, Sherlock,” Victoria says, reaching out to stroke the side of Sherlock’s face. “I knew you couldn’t possibly be dead. Throw yourself of a building? Sherlock Holmes? I’m surprised anyone bought it at all.”

John sniffs and palms him mouth.

“Ms. Trevor says you were friends in Uni,” John says. “Didn’t think you had friends from Uni.”

“We weren’t friends,” Sherlock says. Victoria smiles. “We were idiots. I don’t plan on returning to such a state. Do you, Victoria?”

Victoria drops her hand to her side, but she’s seen something in Sherlock’s eye that has her pleased, like a lioness who has cornered her prey. Sherlock feels the past curling in, like that smoke, in that room, with the poppies and the iron.

“I thought you would like to know he is dead,” Victoria says, flipping her hair. “I didn’t kill him. I would like to know who did, if you fancy a puzzle that I can’t solve. But if you don’t want to pick at old scabs, I understand.” She gathers her coat from where it is draped over Sherlock’s chair. 

“Why would I care who killed him?” Sherlock asks, though she already wants to know, already wants to be on the case, dissecting the whole thing, because if Victoria can’t solve it, it must be good. 

“Consider it a favor between old idiots,” Victoria says. “And there would be…compensation.”

Victoria has a magical ability to make the most mundane words sound criminal, and compensation has never sounded so vulgar to Sherlock’s ears. 

“If it turns out you did kill him, I won’t hide it,” Sherlock says.

“I would never expect you to,” Victoria replies. She loops her scarf, a garish shade of pink, around her long, pale neck. “You could come out to the estate, stay for a few nights. You can even bring your—“ She pauses to look over John with extraordinarily polite condescension. “Ex-lover’s ex-husband?”

“Dead lover’s ex-husband,” Sherlock says.

John coughs and says, “Partner. We’re partners.”

Victoria looks between them skeptically. “You always did manage to find a good time in a dull world, Sherlock.”

She has to bend very slightly to kiss Sherlock on the cheek, and Sherlock does not pull away, because Victoria’s perfume smells like poppies, because Victoria’s perfume smells like opium, and the vivid sensation of a blood slick hand caressing Sherlock’s stomach reaches through time and makes her shiver.

“Tell me you’ll at least think about it,” Victoria says.

“We’re very busy,” Sherlock says. But Sherlock knows that Victoria knows that they will be out at the estate before the week is over. 

“It was lovely to meet you, John. So sorry for your tragedy.”

John hums. “Sorry about yours, whoever he was.”

Victoria pulls on her leather gloves, tugs at the end of the fingers for fit. 

“He was my husband. And though he was ultimately a dull man, I loved him very much, loved him enough to give up many brilliant things to be with him. I feel personally slighted that someone has taken away the privilege of murdering him from me. But most of all I do not know why he was killed, because I did not kill him, and I am very certain he was the kind of man who everyone liked, except for me, but nobody loved, except for me. Which, of course, leaves me with the exclusive desire to kill him.”

“Perhaps someone hated him,” John says.

“Well, certainly,” Victoria says. “But why would you ever kill someone you hated? Life is so much crueler than death.”

Her hat is the last of her things, and once it is on her head, she moves to the door, her stilettos clicking on the hardwood.

“Call me,” Victoria says. “At the very least you can look at his dead body and take satisfaction that he turned out to be every bit the balding, fat, pasty man you said he would.”

 

***

 

After Victoria is gone, Sherlock lies on the couch, hands steepled under her chin, and tries to clean up the place where the past has been uprooted in the bad part of her memory palace. It takes her a while, and an eventual shove on the knee, to realize John is talking to her.

“So she was your girlfriend? And she left you for a man?” He’s still upset that he does not know every last thing about Sherlock, and his desire to possess all the parts of her makes Sherlock want to just chop off a finger and give it to him as a gesture, so he will never be without her, and perhaps putting it in his pocket would sate his hunger to contain her.

“She was a very high end escort,” Sherlock says, prepared with the facts. “She killed her father, and I made it look like she didn’t kill her father, and then we went on a six month drug binge in southeast Asia. A very well-connected, wealthy man extracted us from a Thai prison, and that man was very fond of Victoria, and was less fond of me, as I was less fond of his cock, and then there were some other, less fortunate events in my life, and by the time they were over, Victoria was married, and we ceased contact.”

“Oh,” John said. “Where was Mycroft during all of this?”

“This seems to be a difficult concept for you today, but very few people are the same as they were twenty years ago.”

John is silent for a long moment. “Less fortunate events. Less fortunate than Thai prison?”

“Heroine is a wonderful drug until they take it away from you.”

“Ah.” John sighs through his nose. He stands, then sits again. “I’m going to ask you a question I have no right to know the answer to, but I’m going to ask it anyway, because you will know the answer about me without ever asking, and it’s just a bit frustrating to be the perpetual open book to your never-ending mystery.”

Sherlock lets her head loll to one side, so she can look at John half upside-down.

“I’ve had sexual relations with six women,” Sherlock says. “Including Mary.”

“And never a man?”

It’s an honest question, not a come-on, and for that, Sherlock is thankful. Everything has been so delicate since Mary’s untimely departure. Sherlock lets her eyes roll back in her head, until it hurts.

“There is a time in my past that has more black holes in it than actual memories. Partially from deliberate deletion, partially from intoxication. There are many uncertainties left in the details of my sexual past because of this time. It is unlikely, but not impossible, that I have ever had a sexual encounter with a man.”

John nods. “You know already about my—about me?”

“I can’t tell how far down your throat a cock can go before you gag, but I know you can put a cock in your throat. Due to your reaction to the various false penises we have encountered, my suspicion is that you prefer the real thing.”

He covers his face, he covers his laughter. “Once.”

“Oral encounters? I would say at least six or seven.”

John is bright red. “Deep throated. Once. A very long time ago. It was all a very long time ago.”

Sherlock hums, her head now hanging off the edge of the couch.

“We could leave for the estate tomorrow,” she says.

“You want me to go?” John asks.

“Of course.”

“I’m fairly sure your old uni mate wants to get a leg over now that her husband is out of the way. You wouldn’t want me around for that.”

Sherlock groans, all the blood rushing to her head.

“Victoria’s predatory lascivious nature is irrelevant. I have no interest in re-entering a sexual liaison with her. If she is genuinely mystified by her husband’s death, then it is a true mystery. She is dangerous, how she hides her intelligence behind the burlesque show she presents to the world.”

“Has every woman you’ve fucked killed someone?” John asks. 

The question takes Sherlock by surprise. John still takes Sherlock by surprise. It’s why she loves him. 

“No,” Sherlock says. “Only four. A fifth was one of Britain’s top interrogative torturers, and she was very good, which meant no one under her care ever died.”

“And who was the girl that wasn’t a murderer or a torturer?” John asks.

Sherlock sits up and feels a rush of lightness. 

“A terribly talented rugby player,” she says. 

John laughs, his whole face lighting up with how Sherlock delights him. Fondness crinkles his eyes. The room spins ever so slightly behind him, as the blood drains from Sherlock’s mind.

“Sometimes,” she says, “when you make that face, I want to kiss you. I don’t want to kiss you, because kissing is a means to an end for you, and I don’t want the end. I just want to kiss you. To kiss you.”

John shifts in his chair, his eyes drifting just above Sherlock, to where her hair must be in a state of disarray from being upside-down.

“If I can control myself naked in the shower with you, I think I could take you kissing me.” His voice is soft, bashful. “You used to kiss me. With Mary.”

“I never want to give you too much,” Sherlock says. “I never want to give you more than I mean to, and then have everything break, and then have you leave.”

John stands, strides to the couch, bends, and kisses Sherlock, soft lips closed, one second, two seconds, three seconds and a gentle press before pulling back.

“I love you,” John says. “I’m not going anywhere. Ever, if you’ll let me stay around that long.”

The ‘I love you too’ gets stuck in Sherlock’s throat, and she chokes for a moment, before instead going with, 

“And you don’t even have the semi you got in the shower.”

“Yes, thank you, Erection Police. I have remained flaccid.”

Sherlock smiles, and John smiles back.

“We’ll leave in the morning,” Sherlock says. “I’ve heard it really is a lovely estate. Might be nearly a holiday.”

“You hate holidays,” John says.

“The swimming pool does not negate the dead body,” Sherlock says.

“We all have our own ways to relax, I suppose,” John says.

 

* * *

 

The three hour drive north to Derbyshire is one of heavy mist and companionable silence. There is a twist of anxiety in Sherlock’s stomach, partially at the likelihood of Victoria’s continued seduction attempts, and partially because she feels increasingly like they are entering a situation with too many unpredictable variables for Sherlock to keep John entirely safe. John has packed his gun, but he has also packed his swimsuit. His shoulders are relaxed, his mind elsewhere. He believed Sherlock when she denied her interest in reliving her and Victoria’s past. 

The estate is near Bakewell, properly in the countryside, complete with rolling green hills, and sheep, and the rare, ancient tree that refuses to be uprooted. The mansion itself rejects the scraggly wild of its surroundings, protected by a border of groomed hedges, disguising the tall, wrought-iron gate behind them. John is dozing when Sherlock pulls up to the entrance and rolls down the window to buzz in the intercom.

A rough, male voice comes out of the speaker, startling John to wakefulness.

“You are expected,” is all it says, before Sherlock can say anything at all. The gate before them creaks open, it’s automated hinges neglected of oiling for quite some time. It is the first sign that this is an extravagant place with very little money left within it.

Sherlock parks the car at the edge of a gravel cul-de-sac, beside an antique American car with wood paneling and a single flat tire. The house is massive, all white stone and hand carvings and columns and dark windows. The gardens of roses creeping up the outside have been attended to in recent weeks, but by untrained hands, leaving the bushes unshapely and marred with garish dead stumps where flowers once blossomed.

The man with the rough voice stands just outside the entrance. He is like an alternate universe version of John, an alternate universe where John is on steroids and maintains a five o’clock shadow, and carries a sniper rifle on his back instead of a hand gun tucked between his carefully matched socks in his suitcase. 

John’s shoulders regain the tension that had slipped free in the car at the sight of the rifle.

“Sherlock,” he says under his breath as they approach the entrance. Sherlock shakes her head and gives him a look that she hopes he can read. He frowns at her, but his adrenaline is already kicking in, he is already standing taller, he is already having their own strange brand of fun. Sherlock smiles to herself.

“Ms. Trevor is waiting for you in the parlor,” the man says. There is no hint of a smile on his face, though he is certainly also having fun. Ex-military, dishonorable discharge, gets off on big guns, gets off on the fact that his big guns can smite those who are smarter and more powerful than he is.

“And who are you?” John asks, eying the sight of the rifle peaking over the man’s shoulder, then eying the man’s shoulders, his arms, which are half bare and stretching the thin material of his t-shirt. Interesting.

“The butler,” the man says, as deadpan as they get. 

John laughs, the one that is mostly disbelief, but usually a little bit of amusement too.

“We’ve come to a madhouse, haven’t we,” John whispers when they are in the opulent front hall.

“What were you expecting?” Sherlock whispers back.

“You said swimming pool.”

“I said high-end escort, murderess, drug binge, Thai prison, heroine withdrawal, and dead body. I should never have told you about the swimming pool, you’ve fixated on it now, like a child staying for the first time at an upscale hotel.”

“I have not,” John says.

All of the lights are out, and still everything around them glitters with wealth. There’s something brooding and dead about the stillness of the place, the cold of the marble, the painted eyes of anonymous portraits, the silence of grandeur put to sleep by the passing of time.

They follow the man who is most certainly not the butler through a series of hallways. John carries their shared overnight bag, clutching it with white knuckles. He’s wishing he’d tucked his gun in his trousers instead, now staring at the rifle slung around the not-butler’s back, but he is also glancing at where the butt of the rifle meets the butt of the man, and Sherlock has new data about John’s taste in men. It’s not that different from his taste in women, really, except for the size. And except for Sherlock. Sherlock is the exception to John’s sexual preference for blond and deadly. Sherlock is always John’s exception.

Victoria slumps in an oversized antique armchair, her legs slung over one side, her bare feet kicking slightly. A cigarette dangles from her fingertips, a green silk dress clings to her body, and grey light from the nearby window casts her smudged eyeliner and dark lipstick in perfect melancholy twilight.

“You came so quickly,” she says without looking at them. “Glad I can still make you do that.”

John snorts, less amused now. Victoria’s eyes snap to them, take them in.

“I’m afraid it’s still unclear to me,” she says. “Will you need one bed, or two?”

“One,” Sherlock says. She can feel John puff up with some sort of possessive pride behind her. 

Victoria rolls her eyes, takes a drag of her cigarette, and looks out the window. She’s intoxicated, but on what, Sherlock cannot tell. She does not smell of liquor or marijuana. Her hands are steady, her gaze is focused. But her mind is hazy, lost someplace else. Sherlock wonders if she is back amidst the poppies and iron, if that is a place Victoria wishes she could go back to. If that’s why Sherlock is here.

“Sebastian will show you to your room,” Victoria says. “I can show you the crime scene, which has been tromped all over by incompetent policemen, but is otherwise intact, and the case files, which are stolen, so you should look at them today before someone retrieves them. We’ll have to go into town to view the body. He’s been dead two weeks. I’d like to put him in the ground soon. But better to have you look at him now than have to dig him up later.”

“Crime scene first, then case files. We’ll view the body tomorrow,” Sherlock says. 

“Very well. Dinner is at seven. Don’t worry, I won’t be cooking.” Victoria lets out a little insane laugh, which she catches just moments out of her mouth and kills mid-air. “Go put your things away. Then we’ll see where Joseph went splat.” She over-enunciates the last word to the point of onomatopoeia. Sherlock can hear John’s swallow. The not-butler named Sebastian stands still as a statue, undisturbed, waiting command.

Victoria takes one last drag of her cigarette, and drops the still lit filter to the floor, where it glows against the ancient threads of an authentic oriental rug.

 

* * *

 

“She seems, ah—when she came to the flat the other day, she didn’t seem to be quite so—“

“Mad?” Sherlock suggests.

“I suppose.”

“She’s high,” Sherlock says. “And despite her nonchalance the other day, I do believe she is mourning. She wasn’t lying when she said she loved him.”

“Did you love her?” John asks as he removes his gun from the bag and tucks it in the back of his trousers, smoothing his jumper over the lump.

Sherlock doesn’t answer John, because she honestly doesn’t know.

 

* * *

 

The conservatory is a grand, glass temple to the exotic and foreign. It is filled not only with bright flowers, and oversized palm leaves, but with butterflies of all colors. One alights on John’s shoulder only moments after their entrance into the humid crystal paradise.

“This was Joseph’s passion,” Victoria says, winding her way through the tropical greenery like a python, grazing her fingertips over the lips of delicate flowers. “He hated England, hated the weather, hated all the grass, and hay, and small forests of young trees. Tried desperately to convince me to relocate. Malaysia, the Philippians, anywhere where he could have a real jungle instead of this—“ She pauses at a fountain, looking down, where several large koi dart in and out of sight. “—This cage. A true British man, he was. Always romanticizing foreign lands, exoticizing the people, exploiting the culture. But what else can you expect from a man who has ivory hanging in his home from an elephant he killed with tranquilizer and a machete?” 

There is still yellow crime scene tape around an ugly splotch on the cement floor. Sherlock looks up, to the balcony above them, and follows the iron spiral staircase down to a spot hidden behind a giant Gunnera Manicata. 

“At first, they were so sure he jumped,” Victoria says, her gaze also fixated on the balcony. “But then the fingerprints on the rail were all wrong, and they were so sure he was pushed. Then they ran the toxicology screen during the autopsy, and found strychnos nux-vomica. Considering the effects of such a poison, that they ever suspected jumping or pushing as cause of death speaks to the caliber of the local law enforcement.”

“You didn’t see the body until after the autopsy?” Sherlock asked.

“I still have not seen the body,” Victoria says. “I’m not sure I can bare it.”

Something awful in Sherlock’s stomach twists, and she looks away from Victoria’s ashen face. 

“Who found the body then?” John asks.

“A house guest,” Victoria says. “She called the police. She told me what had happened, kept me away from the scene. I am thankful to her that I did not see him like that.”

“You never used to be afraid of blood,” Sherlock says. Victoria looks at her, and they lock eyes for a moment. The corner of Victoria’s mouth twitches, and it’s everything Sherlock can do to not mimic her.

John clears his throat. “And you’re certain this house guest didn’t kill him?”

“It seems doubtful,” Victoria says, still gazing into Sherlock’s eyes. “She had no motive. They were colleagues, co-dependant, in a business sense. Friendly, but hardly friends. His death was of no benefit to her.”

Sherlock pauses. “You were fucking her, your guest,” she says. “That’s motive.”

“Only if she wished to possess me,” Victoria says. “Which she doesn’t. She never minded sharing.”

“He did,” Sherlock says.

“People change,” Victoria says. She licks her lips and turns away. Sherlock’s chest tightens. She ducks under the police tape and stands over the blood stain on the floor. John is close behind her, but she does not want to be close to anyone, so she takes long strides to the staircase, parting the massive leaves before spiraling upwards, two steps at a time.

At the top of the balcony is a small table, two chairs, and a potted venus flytrap as the centerpiece.

“Cocktails?” Sherlock calls down.

“Only his,” Victoria calls up. “Scotch. Almost gone.”

Sherlock goes to the rail. Fingerprints must have been facing the other way. Clinging to the rail, trying not to fall. He was suffocating, the poison closing his throat, but he did not pitch backwards over the rail. He clung to it, to life.

“Only one set of fingerprints on the rail?” Sherlock calls down.

“Only one.” Victoria’s voice echoes. 

Sherlock peers over the edge. Three stories. Enough for the fall to kill him, but not with any certainty. Land the right way, and end up with a lifetime of paralysis, but still a lifetime. But the poison was certain, would have worked quickly. No need to kill him again by pushing him over the edge. Unless there was a struggle. Unless he knew he was about to die, and wanted to take his killer with him. As his nose was bleeding, as his vision was shutting down, he tried to lash out, maybe even came close to succeeding. 

“There was blood up here. A good deal of it. It’s gone now,” Sherlock says. “Footprints in it would have indicated a struggle. How would the police not see a struggle in the footprints? They might be imbeciles, but they can’t be blind.”

“Maybe it was clean when they got here.” John’s voice startles Sherlock. He’s standing at the top of the staircase, watching her. “The crime scene photos will tell us that.”

“Clean the signs of the struggle on the floor, but not wipe down the surfaces for fingerprints?” Sherlock asks, half to herself.

“Most murderers we encounter are not particularly clever,” John says. Sherlock smirks.

“But this one still has not been caught.” Sherlock bends over the rail. Victoria is staring down at the blood stain, one hand tangled in her own hair. “I’ll need to speak to that house guest, as well as anyone else who was at the estate at the time,” she calls down. Victoria starts, stares up.

“It was only Joseph, myself, Sebastian, and Em, who found him. She should be at dinner tonight.”

“She’s still here?” Sherlock asks.

“Of course,” Victoria says, nearly absentmindedly. “She’s been here for quite some time.”

“Not to impugn the morality of lesbian mistresses, as you essentially were one,” John says softly behind her, “but it seems a bit obvious, doesn’t it?”

“We’re missing something,” Sherlock says, mostly to herself. “Nothing is ever obvious with Victoria. I’m going to feel stupid when I figure out what it is, I can feel it. Stay close, John.”

John stands up straighter. 

Sherlock goes to the table, examines the chairs, bends to peer over every surface of the complex iron-work. When she stands again, she runs a single finger over the spiny closed mouth of the venus fly trap. It quivers under her touch.

 

* * *

 

The crime scene photos are puzzling. There is blood on the balcony, but only in spatters, not in smears on the floor, and not as much as there should be. It’s as if the murderer started to clean the crime scene, got bored, and fucked off.

The body itself is soaked in blood, both below it from where Joseph’s skull smashed open, and above it, from where his eyes and nose and mouth began to leak like a broken faucet. Joseph’s fingerprints cling to the balcony, just as Sherlock imagined, in several different places. He’d tried to hoist his oversized body up, several times, before he slipped, his mind no longer able to give commands without oxygen, the poison shutting him down. He died upon impact with the ground. 

A single piece of evidence indicates the presence of another person on the balcony. Some blessed forensic technician found the blood on Joseph’s horrid, oversized ring on his right hand was the blood of another person. But everyone in the house, and everyone who worked on the grounds, and several of his colleagues had been tested for DNA, and no one had been a match. But Joseph, standard British man that he was, had gotten one good swing before his rival had wrestled him to the edge and forced him over it.

“Technically,” Sherlock says, “the person on the balcony might not be the killer. The poison could have been administered into the drink by anyone, at almost any point, and the poison would have killed him without the fall. The person on the balcony certainly caused his death, but it was redundant. They were killing him twice.”

“They hated him,” John says. “They must’ve.”

“Or he hated them. They came to the balcony to watch him die, he realized what was happening, and in his dying moments, attempted to take them along. The police found more poison in the bottle of scotch, so whoever planted the poison knew Joseph was the only one in the house who drank it. The person who placed the poison knew him, knew the house, and simply wanted him dead. The person on the balcony wanted to watch him suffer.”

“And what about that makes you think they didn’t hate him?” John asks.

“Some people just enjoy suffering,” Sherlock says.

 

* * *

 

The mysterious house guest does not attend dinner, though there is a place set out for her. It is Sebastian who serves the food, first for Victoria, Sherlock, and John, and then for himself, taking a seat at Victoria’s right hand. His gun leans in the corner. Sherlock suspects it is more of a safety blanket than an actual tool, as a sniper rifle at close range is a rather ridiculous weapon. 

“Can you believe him?” Victoria says, gesturing at Sebastian. She is in a much better mood than earlier, and Sherlock attributes it to the half-empty bottle of wine they are all served from. “He cooks, he cleans, he does restoration work on the antiques, and he even attempts to garden. To think the military didn’t want him.”

“Afghanistan or Iraq?” John asks. Had it sounded so much like a pick-up line when Sherlock had said it?

“Iraq,” Sebastian rumbles. His posture is terrible, nothing like John’s straight spine and square shoulders. Sherlock wonders if the military could kick him out just for that. There is something objectively handsome about him, though his masculinity radiates off him ten thousand times stronger than John’s. Sherlock would like to see him fire a gun. She has no interest in anything else. John seems to feel otherwise, laughing as they talk casually about sand and death.

“How is your sister?” Victoria asks, interrupting John and Sebastian’s bizarre flirtation.

Sherlock swirls her wine. “Uncomfortable,” she says. “Never has quite managed to remove that stick from up her arse.”

“Funny,” Victoria says. “If I recall correctly, that was the sort of thing she rather enjoyed.”

“She’s gotten fat,” Sherlock says.

Victoria tilts her head back and laughs. “Would you guess that I went to her first with all this? She turned me down, via that lovely pair of legs she calls an assistant. I guess she’s gotten rather important as well.”

“She’s deeply dedicated to queen and country,” Sherlock says. “It’s irritating.”

“She did always love a queen, back in the day,” Victoria muses. “Sebastian, have you ever worn women’s lingerie?”

“Not since boot camp,” he says. John laughs, a proper laugh, like this is some sort of hilarious inside joke. Sebastian smiles for the first time since they’ve met him. Sherlock cannot help but roll her eyes.

“I have to admit,” John says, “if I had a time machine, my first stop might have to be Mycroft Holmes in the 80s. I just can’t imagine her as anything but the ice queen she is now.”

“None of us are who we once were,” Victoria says. “For better or for worse.”

“Are you better, or are you worse?” Sherlock asks her.

“It’s hard to say,” Victoria says. “Sometimes, I’m not sure I’m here at all.”

The table is silent. Victoria finishes her wine and smiles.

“Did Sherlock tell you we have a heated pool?”

 

* * *

 

They lie in the massive bed, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the ceiling.

“Do you think Mycroft really likes anal sex?” John asks.

“Don’t be repulsive,” Sherlock says.

John giggles. “It’s quite the image. Victoria, strung out and horny, putting something up your sister’s bum. I don’t know if it actually happened or not, but it’s certainly something to think about.”

“It arouses you,” Sherlock says.

John giggles again. He’s had three glasses of wine. Sherlock isn’t sure he meant to have three, but he did. 

“It fascinates me,” John says. “Mycroft! Who would have guessed?”

“I didn’t have to. I walked in on it,” Sherlock says. 

“Oh,” John says, smile falling.

“Don’t act like it was some tragedy. It hardly endeared me to Mycroft, but it didn’t break my heart either.” 

“What did you see?” he asks softly.

“Victoria with her face between Mycroft’s legs. I apologize I did not scrutinize the image long enough to know if there was anything up Mycroft’s arse. It was already more of my sister than I ever needed to see.”

John lets out a soft sigh. Sherlock glances down to where he is fully erect.

“Touch yourself,” Sherlock says.

“What?”

“You heard me.” She turns on her side, facing him, watching him. “I know you want to. Just do it.”

“Will you touch yourself too?” he asks.

“I don’t think so,” Sherlock says. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll help you.”

“You’ll what?”

“I won’t touch you. I don’t want to touch you. I just want to observe. But I can help you anyway. Touch yourself.”

John peers at her in the dark. He swallows. His face is full of doubt. But then his hand is on his prick, gripping, not moving.

“You like that man, Sebastian,” Sherlock says. “You’re not attracted to many men, but you are attracted to him. His military build. His gruff demeanor that you can crack with your dry wit. That you could wrestle, but he would win. He could hold you down and do whatever he pleased with you. It’s been so long for you, with a man, but you’ve never forgotten it, what it feels like to be with someone stronger, someone who wants to take you, to be inside you, to penetrate you.”

“Oh god,” John whispers. His hand moves slowly under the covers.

“What do you picture? That he forces you to your knees? That you try to take him skillfully, with finesse and technique, because you are a considerate lover, but that he doesn’t give a fuck, and ruts into your throat instead, choking you until there are tears in your eyes and saliva coating your chin? That he comes so deep down your throat you can’t even taste it?”

John makes a tortured sound and shuts his eyes, turns his face away from Sherlock. His hand moves faster now, properly jerking himself.

“You’ve never been anally penetrated by anything but a finger, but he looks like the kind of man who likes to fuck deep, likes to bury himself in another person, come inside them, claim them. You’d let him, if he promised to lube you up right, finger you open with those calloused hands, so it wouldn’t hurt so bad when he slammed up into you. Penetration can be about love, but mostly it’s about power, and he would take all your power away from you, John, leave you impaled and gasping, begging for him. Maybe you would weep. Maybe you would lose your erection but still need to come, and he would spend inside you with a yell, jerking and twitching, giving you everything, but then he would leave you, flaccid and aroused, leave you to jerk yourself, just like you’re doing now, jack off to the feeling of his come leaking out of you, wishing he would come back and hold your thighs apart and lick it out of you until you screamed like the whore you would be for him.”

John tries to muffle his cry as he climaxes, but his hips cant up, and his head jerks back, and his whole body spasms with it. His breath heaves, and a single drip of sweat slides from his forehead. For a long time after he just breathes, unable or unwilling to open his eyes.

“What. The fuck. Was that,” he finally manages. 

Sherlock bends over and kisses him. One. Two. Three. Press. Apart. John’s lips leave sweat on hers, and she licks it off.

“You’re jealous,” John says.

“Am not,” Sherlock replies.

“You don’t have to talk me off, though it was truly filthy and I’m not sure who taught you to do that. I won’t leave you. Not for some meathead ex-army bloke, not for some sweet nurse who just wants to cuddle, not even for your sister, not even if she lets me put my prick up her bum.”

“You have to stop with that. It’s awful.”

John laughs, his orgasm making him loose and playful. “Just so we’re clear, I am allowed to have sex with other people, right? I had assumed you still wanted to, but I guess we never really discussed it.”

“As long as you don’t love them,” Sherlock says, immediately regretting it. “Or, not that. As long as you don’t go away.”

“I won’t,” John says. “But you can’t do that again, at least not on this trip, because I did not bring enough pairs of pants to be jizzing in them.” He climbs out of the bed. 

“You can’t go away either,” he says once he’s stripped naked and wiping himself off. “Not for mad drug addicts, not for talented rugby girls.”

“You know I won’t,” Sherlock says. He holds her gaze for a moment, then drops it to the floor.

“Yeah, I suppose I do.”

Because Mary knew death was in London looking for her, and when she decided to run, she picked Sherlock, not John, to be the Bonnie to her Clyde, because John had faced death, but Sherlock had actually died before, and Sherlock turned her down, and without Sherlock, Mary could not outwit death. Sherlock picked John over orgasms, and a mutated love-lust, and a bullet between her tits, and death chased Mary down the streets and alleys of London until they met in a dead end.

 

* * *

 

John falls asleep easily. Sherlock does not. John does not stir when Sherlock gets out of bed, pulls on her dressing gown, and leaves, shutting the door gently behind her. 

The house seems louder at night. Every creak is amplified, every whistle of wind through old cracks in the stone sounds like the whimper of a hundred year old ghost. The halls are almost too dark to see, and Sherlock moves slowly, bumping her hand along the wall and feeling with her toes, so she does not fall down any sudden stairs and find herself another bloodstain on the estate floor.

The entryway is lit with soft candlelight, wrapped in frosted glass, making all the old marble seem cozy and warm. The first floor is lit sporadically like this, certainly a fire hazard, but pleasant in a way that wraps a calm around Sherlock like a heavy blanket. She explores, poking her head into studies and parlors and libraries, and a very impressive sculpture hall. There are more lights on towards the back of the house, and as she rounds the corner and hears the splash of water, she knows why. Sherlock is not the only one who cannot sleep.

The pool is enclosed in glass, and is humid, much like the conservatory. The floor of it is tiled with a mosaic painting of angels and cherubs, the perimeter covered with draping plants and classical statuary. It smells of chlorine and flowers and heat.

The swimmer glides beneath the water, powerful strokes for such scrawny limbs. She reaches the edge of the pool and drags herself from the water like a creature, bending awkwardly into sharp angles, but then she stands and reassembles as the magnificent specimen she is.

She is rail thin, thinner than the last time Sherlock saw her, and there are scars across her torso that are about six months old, knife scars, and whip scars, and burn scars. They match Sherlock’s, the ones she carries from the time she was dead. The woman before her is wearing the smallest black bikini Sherlock has ever seen, and her raven hair is cropped close to her head, so close that when she runs a hand over it to wick the water away, it spikes up.

Jane Moriarty grins like a jackal. 

“Is that John Watson’s severed dick in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” Jane says.

 

* * *

 

John shifts and wakes when Sherlock gets back into bed.

“Ugh, hey, why are you wet?” He shifts away from her, sits up, coming to full alertness. 

Sherlock shivers, naked, and dripping all over the sheets.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Sherlock says.

“Christ, let me get a towel.” He goes to the bathroom, and Sherlock stares at the ceiling, half trying to speed her brain up, to process every shred of new information, and half trying to not think at all. She’s come to identify that heavy feeling in her stomach as guilt, and she does everything she can to ignore it, even when John sits her up and wraps an oversized towel around her.

“So you found the pool after all,” John says. “Did you fall in, or were you pushed? I hope you weren’t poisoned.”

Sherlock turns to him, hoping her face doesn’t give away everything. Thankfully, John is slow, and he just looks puzzled.

“I—I have a weakness, John,” she says. “A blind spot.”

John frowns, his confused frown, and it’s normally a look Sherlock loves on him, because it’s so human, but now it makes that heavy feeling in the bottom of her stomach twist. 

“I figured out what was missing,” she says.

“What was it? Did you solve the case? Do you feel stupid?”

“Abominably stupid.”

“Tell me.” His smile is sleepy, but still eager. He takes a corner of the towel and rubs it over her damp hair.

“I haven’t solved it,” Sherlock says. She stares into his adoring eyes. “I need to shower. Go back to bed.”

“Sherlock. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you in the morning. Sleep. I’ll be in soon.”

“Dry yourself off this time, yeah?” John is too tired to protest. Sherlock is thankful.

She stands in the shower for a long time, with the water on as hot as it will go, until there is no heat left. Then she stands in the cold.

By the time she returns, John is asleep. When she crawls into the bed, he instinctually curls around her. She takes him into her arms, and he hums happily. 

She can’t tell him in the morning. Maybe she won’t tell him at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the location of the estate, I googled where Mr. Darcy's estate was in Pride and Prejudice. For the poison, I googled what killed Joffery. I am not particularly concerned with the facts of reality, and you shouldn't be either, you pretty thing, you.


	2. Chapter 2

Sebastian makes a full English breakfast, which John eats with great enthusiasm. He is breaking Sebastian down with little compliments and army jokes, and that stupid smile he gives when he is trying to appeal sexually to a stranger. Sherlock can’t eat.

Victoria is no where to be found.

“So, you’ve got to tell me what you discovered by falling in the pool in the middle of the night,” John says when Sebastian leaves the dining room for a moment.

“I went for a swim,” Sherlock says. “When I got out, I noticed a strychnine tree growing in the corner. It’s the tree used to make the poison that killed Joseph. There are, in fact, at least twelve different lethally poisonous plants growing in this house.”

“But the police found poison in the scotch bottle. It couldn’t have been accidental,” John says.

“In a house filled with guns, it is only a matter of time before someone is shot. This house is filled with poison. The entire estate, and everyone inside it, is toxic.”

John blinks at her. “Did something happen with Victoria?”

“We’ll go look at the body as soon as you are done stuffing your face, though I highly recommend you cease your flirtation with the man carrying around a sniper rifle, because he is, in fact, carrying it around for a reason. Then we will return to London. I can solve it from there.”

“Return—Sherlock, we just got here. I’ve never seen you walk away from a case before.”

“We’re not walking away. We’re taking a brief tour of Chernobyl, and leaving before the radiation seeps into our blood.”

“I haven’t even been to the pool. You at least got to go swimming.” John raises his eyebrows accusatorily, and Sherlock wonders for a moment if he knows. But he couldn’t possibly. There would be a lot more angry screaming. 

“Finish eating. I’m going to get dressed. Don’t let Sebastian know you have the barrel of a hand gun between your arse-cheeks, or there will be no extracting you.”

John laughs, and shakes his head, and shrugs, at a momentary peace with the enigma of Sherlock. Sherlock takes the moment and runs.

 

* * *

 

Upstairs, Victoria’s door is cracked open. Not wide enough to be a blatant invitation to anyone who walked by. But wide enough for Sherlock to see slivers of bare skin, wide enough for her to hear what is happening inside. She freezes there, in the hall, her moral compass spinning and spinning. She should call John’s name, and John will call the police, will call Mycroft, and the whole thing will be over.

Instead, she slips through the door. Once inside, she shuts it behind her.

Victoria’s smile is half gasp when she sees Sherlock, because Moriarty has two fingers deep inside her, and is sucking a bruise onto her neck. They are both so naked and flushed, and Sherlock is barely dressed.

“Sherlock,” Victoria says, beckoning to her. “Em tells me you met last night.”

Jane mouths around Victoria’s right tit, smiles with a nipple between her teeth, her eyes glinting at Sherlock.

“We’ve met before,” Sherlock says, stepping closer to the bed, hand quivering with the urge to reach out and touch. 

“How nice,” Victoria says, spreading her legs for Jane’s face. “What a lovely time with reunited friends.” Her voice is dreamy, hitching as Jane moves her fingers, kisses her thighs. 

“You can’t let John see you,” Sherlock says to Jane, who is mouthing over Victoria’s vulva.

Jane takes a firm lick that coaxes a decadent noise out of Victoria. “You didn’t tell him?”

“Obviously not.”

“Naughty girl.”

Sherlock reaches out, draws a line with one finger from Jane’s shoulder down the slope of her back. “It was better when you were dead,” she says. “How are you not dead?” Her finger traces a circle at the curve of Jane’s arse.

Jane comes up for breath. “You want to play that game? You really want to play the ‘Whoops I’m not dead’ game?”

Sherlock drifts towards the end of the bed. Jane spreads her legs. Sherlock palms Jane’s arse, tentatively at first, like maybe she really is a ghost. How easy things would be, if only Jane were a ghost. 

Victoria is in a state now, one hand futilely trying to grip Jane’s short hair, and the other one tangled in her own, her head arched back, a deep red, splotchy blush running down her long neck and across her tits. She is panting and begging, and Sherlock can smell the poppies. She can smell the blood.

Victoria twists and groans with orgasm, slamming a hand against the headboard. Jane pulls away with a sloppy kiss, and slides her fingers out. She turns on her back and sits up, presenting them to Sherlock. They are covered in bright red menstrual fluid. Iron floods Sherlock’s nostrils. 

“She gets so horny when she’s on the rag,” Jane says. “But you know that already, don’t you.”

If Mary was a landmine, Moriarty is a nuclear bomb. Mary put a bullet in Sherlock’s chest, but swore she meant to keep her alive. Moriarty has killed Sherlock once. She’ll do it again. Sherlock needs John, Sherlock needs John right now, needed him last night, needs him to make her compass point towards right again.

Moriarty smears her bloodstained fingers across Sherlock’s lips, until Sherlock opens her mouth. It tastes like Victoria, it tastes like that smoky room, but now, once she’s licked the fingers clean, it’s Moriarty who seizes up to suck the blood from Sherlock’s lips, to kiss her like they are falling off a cliff into a waterfall together, and Sherlock grabs her and kisses her harder, and they topple back on the bed, tangling in each other.

Victoria hums above them. “You do know each other,” she says. Sherlock wrenches away when she smells the opium. Victoria has the pipe, smoke curling from her mouth. She offers it out to Sherlock.

“I don’t indulge,” Jane says from beneath her. “But you should feel free. I’ve always regretted not being there for your rebellious phase. The fun we could have had. The fun we could still have.”

Sherlock is off the bed in a second. She tries to collect herself. She smells like Victoria’s cunt, tastes like Jane’s mouth. She tries to think about the blood stain on the floor in the conservatory. Tries to think about cadavers. Tries to recite the Periodic Table of Elements. 

Then Jane is pressing a jet black silicone cock against Sherlock’s stomach.

“You came so hard sitting on my fingers last night,” Jane says. “Has anyone ever told you how loud you are when you come? Want to show me how much louder you get when you sit on a cock?”

Sherlock whimpers, a horrible, embarrassing sound that she wishes she could shove back in her mouth. But it’s too late, and Jane already knows she has won.

 

* * *

 

John is sitting on the edge of the oversized bed in their room when Sherlock returns. His hair is mussed, and his lips are red, but his clothes, though ruffled, are intact. He won’t meet Sherlock’s eye.

“One thing I’m thankful for,” he says, “is that I don’t need the power of deduction to tell when you’ve had sex, because everyone can hear your orgasm in a hundred-mile radius.”

It’s not a joke, and neither of them laugh. Sherlock sits beside him, tightening her dressing gown around her.

“I thought we weren’t flirting,” John says. “I thought we had to extract ourselves before things got too carried away.”

“I know who was on the balcony with Joseph,” Sherlock says. “And I have a suspicion of who poisoned him. And if that suspicion is correct, there may have been a second murder. The body will still be on the grounds. We can’t find the second body from London.”

“You got all that from fucking Victoria?” John asks. 

“We need to view Joseph’s body,” Sherlock says.

“You need to shower,” John says.

“You too?” Sherlock asks.

“No,” John says, sticking out his lips in exaggeration. “I extracted myself, because you told me everyone in this house was toxic.”

He joins her in the shower anyway.

“Jesus,” he says, running his finger near the bleeding bite mark over her heart. “I should disinfect that.”

“It’s fine,” Sherlock says. She scrubs the dried blood off her thighs before John notices.

“I always knew you were a woman of vices,” John says, soaping her back. “Drugs. Violence. Adrenaline. Nicotine. I suppose I should have suspected sex too. Mary once said you were a hedonist, and I debated her on it, but I think she was right.”

“It’s not simply sex,” Sherlock says. “If it was simply sex, I would have had a lot more than six lovers, don’t you think?”

“Your blind spot,” John echoes. “You were blind to Mary. What was it about her that made you so weak?”

“It was so stupid,” Sherlock says, closing her eyes. “She said it right at the start.”

“What?”

“Dangerous girls. The more ways they can kill me, the more I want them.”

John sighs, and Sherlock turns, opens her eyes, meets his tired face.

“The only other time I’d seen you look the way you looked at Mary the first time you fucked her, was in that pool, when you saw Moriarty for the first time.”

John is so close to the truth, Sherlock holds her breath.

“Is Victoria going to kill you?” John asks.

“No,” Sherlock says, breathing and relaxing her shoulders, rinsing out her hair. 

“Have any of your other lovers tried to kill you? Besides Mary?”

Sherlock thinks about it for a moment, and turns off the water.

“Never two-time a rugby player and a professional torturer,” she says, and steps out of the shower.

 

* * * 

 

Joseph is fat, balding, pasty, and cold. He has the same mustache from twenty years ago, but it no longer makes him look dashing and posh, but instead a bit like a walrus. The piercing he once had through one nipple is long healed, the Chinese dragon tattooed on his hip now fading. Sherlock is glad he’s dead, for his own sake.

There is a love bite just below his collar line. It is dainty and suckled, not gnawed and sucked.

“He would do anything to keep her,” Sherlock says. “He would stay in England, no matter how much he hated it. He would do boring work to make endless money, grow fat and pale in the countryside, when all he wanted was an explorer’s hat and a machete, and a fantasy about the mystery of foreign lands. In the end, he did the one thing he always swore he wouldn’t, in a last attempt to hold on to her.”

“Which was?” John asked, glancing over the grey dead skin.

“He opened their marriage. First, only in their bed, anonymous women, single encounters. But then Victoria took a lover.”

“The house guest,” John says.

“Precisely. She was a business associate, someone of means, someone of intelligence. Someone who could compete with Joseph. Victoria might as well have been mocking his attempts to contain her. So he retaliated. He took a lover as well. I suspect someone young, someone with awe in their eyes, an awe that even Victoria never had. Perhaps an intern, or an assistant.”

“How could you know that?” John asks.

Sherlock taps the love bite. “This was not made with Victoria’s mouth. It was not made in the heat of the moment either, as it is carefully placed where it will not be seen if he is wearing a shirt. It was made tenderly, almost ponderously. It was made by someone falling in love with him, not by someone beginning to doubt why they had loved him in the first place.”

“You can tell all that by a dead man’s hickey?”

“I can tell that because love is a vicious motivator,” Sherlock says. 

“The lover poisons Joseph? But why?”

“The poison was not meant for Joseph,” Sherlock says. “But the person on the balcony was three steps ahead of everyone else.”

John frowns. “You’re not telling me something.”

“I can’t tell you,” Sherlock says. “Not yet. Not until I’m sure.”

“Don’t do this, Sherlock. Don’t shut me out.”

Sherlock backs away from Joseph. “There were too many uncontrollable variables. We should never have come. But now we are here, and I have to know why. We have to find the body.”

“Who’s body?” John is exasperated now. He hates being outside of Sherlock’s mind, instead of worming around inside it.

“The lover. She is somewhere at the estate. We can only hope she has not been disintegrated.”

 

* * *

 

Sherlock, John, Victoria, and Sebastian have lunch on the enclosed back balcony. 

“Ah, look,” John says, peering out the window. “There’s the pool.”

It’s two floors below them, enclosed in glass. Moriarty is swimming naked.

“Is that your house guest, then?” John says. “We’ve yet to question her.”

“Em was rather traumatized by the whole thing. I’m afraid she’s shy, and finding my husband dead did not help matters,” Victoria says.

Sherlock swallows her laugh so hard that she chokes. John slaps her on the back, a little too hard. 

“Sebastian, how long have you been staying here?” John asks, half polite, half inquisitive. He thinks he’s moving along the investigation.

“I came with Ms. Em,” Sebastian says. “About six months ago.”

“Long time to keep house guests, hm?” John says.

“It’s a big house,” Victoria replies. “I don’t like to feel empty.”

“I’d like to question Em after lunch. Perhaps in the gardens,” Sherlock says.

“Yes, I’d like to meet her,” John says.

“No,” Sherlock says too quickly and too loud, startling everyone in the room.

“What? Why?” John says.

“If she’s shy and traumatized, it will be best if I go alone,” Sherlock says, which makes no sense, because Sherlock is outgoing and traumatic, and John is gentle and empathetic. “Besides, I want you to tour the parts of the house we haven’t seen yet. Sebastian, perhaps you could take him around. You could finally have that swim, John.”

John’s mouth hangs open slightly. Sebastian, for all his harsh exterior, blushes. 

When they are alone in the hallway, John grabs Sherlock’s arm.

“Just so we’re clear, you did just tell me to go have a shag in the pool instead of assisting you on a case,” he says, voice low.

“That’s not what I said at all.” Sherlock pulls out of his grip. “Keep an eye out for loose dirt in the wine cellar.”

“You’ve gone mad,” John says.

Sherlock frowns, then winces. “It wasn’t a euphemism. Dear lord, John, what you must think of me.”

John snorts. “Do you want the gun?”

“For a shy and traumatized young woman?”

John squints at her. “Right. Suppose not.”

Sebastian finds them. “Em agreed to meet you in the gardens,” he says to Sherlock. “Ready, John?”

John shoots Sherlock a look, and Sherlock, as discretely as possible, pinches John’s ass. John yelps. Subtlety is only an occasional strength for John. But it’s enough to distract him, enough to keep his mind from the doubts now swirling around Sherlock and the mysterious house guest.

 

* * *

 

“Don’t,” Sherlock says, as Jane goes to kiss her. “He knows we’re alone. He’ll know.”

Jane rolls her eyes. She’s in a sun dress, which utterly contradicts everything about her, and looks half-decent. 

“Seb will distract him. Man’s hung like a donkey in a Tijuana side show. I’m telling you, Sherlock, if you ever want to take a dick, I highly recommend his.”

Sherlock wrinkles her nose. “I need to know where you were. After you were dead. Before you were here.”

Moriarty laughs like bells. “Why would I ever tell you that?”

Sherlock tenses her jaw. “Because you know what it will do to me.”

Jane’s smile falls. “Poor infant baby child, Sherlock. You were just built to be broken, over, and over, and over.”

“Still not dead,” Sherlock says.

“Me either,” Jane replies. She presses her front to Sherlock’s. They are hidden in the hedges, surrounded by poorly trimmed rose bushes. “You want to know if I had something to do with Mary?”

Sherlock doesn’t let any surprise show, because of course Moriarty would know what had happened. Of course she would know who Mary was. It wasn’t what Sherlock was asking, but now she has to know.

“Did you?”

“A little,” Jane says. “A long time ago, we used to be friends.”

Sherlock winces. She doesn’t care that Jane sees that. Jane already knows how stupid, stupid, stupid Sherlock has been.

“Darling,” Jane says, cupping Sherlock’s face. “Sweetheart. Princess. Light of my life. We all have our weaknesses. We’re all human. Don’t be ashamed.” 

“You’re not human,” Sherlock says. “You’re some sort of lizard.”

Jane flickers out her tongue. Sherlock looks away.

“I don’t suppose you would want to just tell me what happened to Joseph’s lover, would you?” Sherlock asks.

“That sounds like no fun at all,” Jane says.

“I know where you were,” Sherlock says. “When you were dead.”

“You don’t. You suspect, but you don’t know.”

“I saw the scars. Intimately.”

Jane hums, her interest suddenly peaked. “Are they from hands you know, intimately?”

Sherlock sighs deeply. “Don’t be perverse.” She shuts her eyes as her chest tightens.

“See, look at that,” Jane says. “Oops, I broke you!”

Sherlock opens her eyes, shoots Jane a look like daggers. “You dropped me off a building and I didn’t break. I hardly think this rivals that.”

Jane laughs again. “I was so wrong about both of you. The Virgin and The Ice Queen. More like The Slut and La Reina de Fuego, muy caliente, ay ay ay!” 

Sherlock toys with the edge of the hedge behind her. “We’re your blind spot,” she says.

“Mm, Sherlock Holmes, you are my blinding, shining star,” Jane says. “Love to follow you, love to stare at you, would love to put you out in a massive supernova.”

Sherlock kisses her then, wrapping her arms around Jane’s narrow waist, pulling her close. Jane hums and giggles into Sherlock’s mouth, palms Sherlock’s arse, grinds her thigh against Sherlock’s groin. Sherlock regrets wearing all of her clothes, envies the easy access of Jane’s ridiculous dress, especially when Sherlock has two fingers inside her, and Jane is gasping Sherlock’s name.

“I’m your weakness,” Sherlock whispers as she makes Jane come in the grass.

“I believe, as with everything between us,” Jane says dreamily, tugging on Sherlock’s hair, “the feeling is mutual.”

 

* * *

 

Sherlock goes to the wine cellar. Sebastian sees her. John does not. Sebastian tightens his grip in John’s hair, snaps his hips a little harder into John’s mouth, and meets Sherlock’s eyes with an intense stare. John groans around Sebastian’s cock.

Sherlock watches them for a minute, examines Sebastian’s flush, and the sounds John makes. Sebastian looks at her like he wants this to be turning her on, like he wants her to join, which is absurd, and Sherlock raises a condescending eyebrow at him. Sebastian chokes John for half a second, which John appears to enjoy. 

Sherlock smiles, because it’s always nice to be right. She leaves as Sebastian’s breathing picks up, as his face gets redder, because most of this data is useless. Mostly, it makes her feel less alone. John always makes her feel less alone.

Before she goes, she does point at Sebastian, the point at John, and pantomime jerking off. Sebastian rolls his eyes, points at himself, points at John, and then pokes his tongue inside his cheek in a poor mimicry of fellatio. Sherlock gives him a thumbs up. There is too much else going on to also have to be responsible for John’s erection later.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock takes her phone to the sculpture hall and makes a couple calls. The missing girl’s name is Sonia Pasolini, and she was not anyone’s assistant or intern, but a 20-year-old Italian tourist, who was last seen at a masquerade party at the estate three months ago. She’d been partying in London on her parent’s money, her friends told the police when someone finally reported her gone, and befriended several rich men when the parental line dried up. No one was investigating, because her parents assumed she’d met money, and run off, which was apparently something they’d long been expecting, and were not particularly concerned about it. 

Sherlock can picture her. Young, beautiful, gold digging. Joseph would have been perfect. He would have been kind, and lonely. His wife would have welcomed Pasolini into their lives, into their bed. What an odd little nest of sodomy the estate would have been, for a while at least, with Victoria and Jane, and Joseph and Sonia, and however Sebastian fit in. But in the end, it was three snakes in bed with two mice.

Pasolini must have been smart, otherwise Joseph and Victoria would not have tolerated her for so long. She must have been genuinely invested in Joseph in some capacity, to remain at the estate, instead of seeking the next nightlife destination. He would have taught her about the plants, their origins and uses. She would have seen the poison everywhere.

Sherlock searches the oversized kitchen. She checks each bathroom she can find. Behind clothing in closets. Looking for plastic bins of flesh degrading in acid, looking for bones, looking for a freezer with a decapitated head. Sherlock tries to climb into Jane’s mind, but it is unpleasant, having spent so much of the day in her cunt.

She finds Victoria chain-smoking in the largest library. 

“You’re going to light this all on fire,” Sherlock says as Victoria ashes on the rug.

“Does anyone care?” Victoria says. “Do you?”

“So many books would be a great loss,” Sherlock says. Victoria gives her a sad smile.

“Have you figured it out yet?” Victoria asks.

“Nearly,” Sherlock says. She crouches beside Victoria’s chair. “I need you to tell me who else was in the house the day Joseph was killed.”

“Em, Sebastian, and me,” Victoria says.

“You’re lying.”

Victoria’s head rolls back. “So you know about Sonia, then.”

“Yes, but that’s not who I’m asking about.”

Victoria takes a long drag. “I’m sorry I brought you here, Sherlock. It was a cruel thing to do. I just wanted to know, for certain, what had happened. I didn’t want to believe without facts.”

“Tell me who’s blood was on Joseph’s ring,” Sherlock says.

“That’s just it,” Victoria says. “I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see them on the balcony. I don’t know why he died.”

“He died because Jane Moriarty thought it would be funny. He died because she knew it would bring me here.”

Victoria’s head tilts up, genuine confusion across her face.

“Who is Jane Moriarty?”

 

* * *

 

John is asleep in the oversized bed when Sherlock returns to the bedroom to charge her phone. She wakes him up.

“Did you see any sign of a body?” she asks. John raises a single sleepy eyebrow. “Don’t answer that,” she says.

“What did the house guest have to say?” John asks.

“Not enough,” Sherlock says. “Without the lover’s body, my case falls apart.”

“Then why would the body even still be here?”

“Because the person who killed her enjoys death.”

John frowns. The setting sun coming through the window casts him in a noble gold. Sherlock kisses the frown, and it lessens.

“Tell me what you think you know,” John says.

“Her name was Sonia Pasolini, and she lived here for about five months. She was Joseph’s mistress, but there were undoubtedly other pairings involving her in the house, because I increasingly suspect this is a palace at the gates of Sodom. With time and observation, Pasolini learned the house guest was dangerous, a threat to at least Joseph, if not the rest of them. She feared for Joseph, she feared for herself. Joseph was not alone in his scotch indulgence, the house guest preferred it as well, and it was for the house guest that the scotch was poisoned, by Pasolini.”

“Surely she would have told Joseph not to drink the scotch himself, then,” John says.

“She didn’t have time. Pasolini met with the house guest on the balcony, brought the house guest the drink. They would have had a flirtatious, but tense relationship. The liquor would have been a peace offering. But then Pasolini was called away, by the one person in the house that day that has been hidden from us. Joseph joined the house guest on the balcony, and took the poured drink that was offered to him.”

“So the house guest didn’t discover the body. She watched him die.”

“She poisoned him purposefully,” Sherlock says. “She was three steps ahead.”

“But her blood wasn’t on his ring. He didn’t hit her. The police would have seen, the DNA tests would have come out.”

“There was another person in the house that day. A fifth, come to oversee the entire operation. This fifth person in the house was a third person on the balcony, and it was this person that Joseph struck in his last moments of life, as he realized how terribly he had been played.”

“Who was it?” John asked with the eagerness of a child on Christmas morning.

Sherlock swallowed.

“Mycroft.”

“Mycroft? What does she have to do with any of this?”

Sherlock put her head in her hands. “Goddamn everything.”


	3. Chapter 3

They go to dinner, though John doesn’t want to, because he still doesn’t understand, and wants to so desperately, but Sherlock isn’t ready to face the entire truth of the matter, because of how it tilts her world, because of how John might look at her.

“Promise me something,” Sherlock says before they leave the bedroom.

“Anything,” John says without pause.

“Don’t leave me. You are the only person in this world I trust. You might be the only person in this world I love.”

John touches her cheek. “We’ve been over this.”

“Tell me again.”

“I won’t leave you,” he says. “No matter what.”

They walk into dinner and John drops his wine glass. Jane is seated between Victoria and Sebastian, complete in her little black dress and knowing smile.

John turns to Sherlock, a ripple of rage going across his face as he quickly puts the pieces together.

“You unbelievable cunt,” he says to Sherlock.

“Cunt of the century,” Moriarty says. “Victoria and I both agree.”

As soon as John’s gun is out, Sebastian’s rifle is cocked and aimed at Sherlock. John puts the gun away. Sebastian lays the rifle on the table like a centerpiece. 

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t call the police right now,” John says.

Sebastian looks pointedly at the rifle, and squints at John.

“The police don’t care,” Victoria says. “They were here, they were gone, they’re not going to come back.” She drains her wine glass. “I wouldn’t call it the cunt of the century.”

“She’s never ridden you,” Jane says to Victoria. 

John looks at Sherlock like he might cry. “How—what—how could you?”

Sherlock half shrugs, though her jaw is tense. “Dangerous girls,” she says, her voice breaking.

John walks out.

“You promised!” Sherlock yells after him. He doesn’t respond.

Jane shakes her head. “I rue the day you met John Watson, because he has been the number one fun-ruiner in our lives, just an absolute wet blanket. We’re going to have to leave now, probably. Find some other palace of sodomy. This one was so nice.”

“You revealed yourself to him,” Sherlock says. “You brought us here, with your sloppy, stupid crime scene. You knew he would come.”

“It was a little bit worth it,” Jane says, tilting her head. “His face. Bless him.”

“Leave?” Victoria registers, a little too late. 

“Sherlock, would you like to call Mommy first and have a chat, or should I?” Jane says. “If somebody’s going to be spanked, I would rather it be you, and I would very much like to watch.”

“You can’t kill her,” Sherlock says, pointing to Victoria.

Jane’s playfulness drops. “Why not?”

“Because I said so. She doesn’t know who you are. She barely knows who she is, unless someone is pulling her strings.”

“Aw, sweet honey baby child. That’s quite the risk you’re asking me to take.”

“Leave now,” Sherlock says. I won’t call Mycroft until the morning, and you won’t call her at all. Tell me where Sonia Pasolini’s body is, and then vanish. Vanish and we won’t both die all over again. You know what a hassle it is.”

Moriarty considers this. “You know I’ll always come back to my shining star.”

“Yes, yes. And the day I become a black hole, I will consume you, and we will be infinitely compressed darkness together for all eternity while the universe spins around us. It will be beautiful and poetic, and we will treasure it then. Leave.”

Jane tsks. “You’ve been studying astronomy. Who told you that was important?”

Sherlock looks to where John has vanished. Moriarty stands up from her chair. Sebastian follows suit. Victoria looks as lost as Sherlock has ever seen her.

“You’ll have the body in the morning,” Jane says. “Tell Mycroft I send kisses, and that tonight’s good night, and not goodbye. Also, the next time she catches me, she should just tattoo her name on my arse, because it will hurt the same but be prettier than the 27 cigarette burns on my ribcage. Plus it will add something to when I sit on her face, don’t you think?”

Sherlock’s face burns. “You have an hour.” She grabs Victoria’s arm and hauls her up.

“Em,” Victoria says, her body like a reed in the wind. “Don’t go.”

“For the record,” Jane says, “none of this was my idea, and anybody upset about it can talk to Big Momma in the morning.”

“Some of it was your idea,” Sherlock said. 

“You were my idea,” Moriarty says, coming close. She kisses Sherlock goodbye, and Sherlock cannot help but kiss her back. She will spend weeks after trying to delete it, and ultimately fail.

 

* * *

 

John, thankfully, is in the bedroom. He looks questioningly at Victoria, who is in tears, half wrapped around Sherlock.

“We’re going to stay in here until daylight. Have your gun ready. No sleep,” Sherlock says.

“You’re letting them leave?” John says with some degree of disgust.

“I don’t have a choice,” Sherlock says. “Mycroft can explain it to you in the morning.”

“What happened, Sherlock?” His face is so full of despair.

“This was a trap,” Sherlock says. “And I fell right into it.”

 

* * *

 

Victoria falls asleep, her tears drying on the pillow. John sits at the window and does not look at Sherlock. For a short time, there is a commotion downstairs, and then doors slamming and a car leaving. They stay in the bedroom. They wait for the puppeteer. 

Just after dawn, there is a knock on the bedroom door. John answers by putting his gun in Mycroft’s face.

“Honestly,” Mycroft says. “Such drama. And would you guess there is a thawing dead body on the dining room table downstairs?” She looks around the room at the three of them. “What a mess.”

 

* * *

 

Sonia Pasolini is indeed thawing on the dining room table. The smell is dreadful. They go to one of the parlors instead, Victoria in a haze, John all rigid spine and bags under his eyes.

“So,” Mycroft says, smoothing her long ginger hair back. “What do you know?”

“Sometime after Moriarty’s death, perhaps immediately, you took her,” Sherlock says. “You kept her for over two years. You tortured her, sometimes for information, sometimes for fun. You fucked her while she was your prisoner. And then, for reasons I cannot comprehend, you daintily placed her in this estate, with a body guard, an endless stream of money, and a very tall fence.”

Mycroft opens her mouth, but Sherlock holds up a hand. John stares at Sherlock.

“You knew Victoria and Joseph well, and they were happy to take on a guest for you, despite the additional man with a gun. You overestimated your ability to predict people, by assuming Victoria and Joseph’s marriage was as strong as it was when I could not break it, and you underestimated Moriarty in nearly every capacity, which is just a stunning failure on your behalf. Moriarty seduced Victoria, and they became lovers, marking the beginning of Joseph and Victoria’s open marriage, and the end of any chance they would have at lasting happiness.

“Not long after, Joseph met Sonia Pasolini. Drawn in by his wealth and apparent decadent lifestyle, Pasolini moved into the estate, and entered into sexual encounters with perhaps all of its inhabitants. It was this intimacy that led such a smart, sober girl to identify Jane Moriarty for the reptile she is. Jane, bored by her containment, and especially bored by the increasingly dull Joseph, and irate with Victoria’s lingering attachment to him, began to fantasize about his death, perhaps out loud, perhaps in bed. Pasolini knew Jane as a companion and a lover, but now Jane was a threat, to the man that Pasolini was falling in love with.

“Pasolini made the poison. Pasolini met Moriarty on the balcony and gave her the drink. But then Pasolini left. She had to have, otherwise she would have warned Joseph of the poison in the drink. But why would she leave the balcony, and not see her plan through?”

John and Victoria followed Sherlock’s stare to Mycroft, who pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

“Two and a half years is an investment,” Mycroft said. “Financially, professionally, emotionally. In the end, we let her fester, which reflected poorly on everyone involved. Carrie says hello, by the way.”

Sherlock flinches.

“Jane Moriarty is mad, this much is certain,” Mycroft says. “But she is also the greatest criminal mastermind of the century.”

“Well, she can’t have cunt of the century. Sherlock’s already claimed that title,” John says, thinking aloud. Mycroft raises an eyebrow.

“Her mind belongs to me,” Mycroft says. “I need it cracked open, but still ticking inside. She stopped ticking for us. She needed to live again.”

“And Moriarty’s mind is worth more than the lives of this innocent man and woman?” John asks, anger uncontained.

“Worth more than me?” Sherlock says.

Mycroft frowns. “It was never my intention for you to find out. I picked Victoria partially because I suspected you would never want anything to do with her again.”

“Moriarty killed Joseph to bring me here,” Sherlock says. “Set up a mystery so I would stay. Romantically entangled herself with my former lover to ensnare me in her web. How could you, of all people, not see the consequences of your actions?”

Mycroft’s eyes are cold. “Joseph’s death was an unfortunate casualty, but a necessary one. He knew who Moriarty was, and was increasingly uncomfortable with her presence in the house, and her hold over his wife. Pasolini acted alone, but Joseph planted the seeds. Jane knew everything, because she always does. She called me to the estate that day to assist in removing Joseph from the situation, and though I wish it had not transpired that way, sometimes our best efforts are not enough.”

“Who killed the girl?” Sherlock asks.

“I did,” Victoria says from where she is slumped in a chair. “I thought Sonia had killed Joseph. She was bent over his body, covered in his blood. I strangled that delicate throat of hers, and Jane hid the body. I barely remember Mycroft being there. The whole day is like a dream. I had so much doubt—so much doubt, I had to find the truth. I’m sorry, Sherlock. I didn’t know.”

“But Mycroft did,” Sherlock says. “How could she not? But you neglected to tell me Moriarty was alive, that you were torturing her, that you were succumbing to her, or that you were setting free the woman who killed me into a world that I am still in!”

“I did not set her free,” Mycroft says. “You did.”

“To save Victoria’s life. And likely, John’s.”

Mycroft shrugs, looks out the window. “She’ll run, and we’ll chase her, and there will be a good game before we catch her.”

“You did this on purpose,” Sherlock says. 

Mycroft licks her lips and smoothes her skirt. “I never doubted your ability to handle yourself, Sherlock. To be honest, I thought if you encountered it, you might find the entire affair a good time, and I suspect you have enjoyed yourself. And look. Moriarty’s ticking again.”

John punches Mycroft in the face.

“The second time in two weeks a man has broken my nose,” Mycroft says, pulling a handkerchief out as blood spurts from her nostrils. “What ever happened to chivalry?”

 

* * *

 

For the first part of the drive home, John is silent. He stares out the window, but does not sleep, though he must be tired.

“You’re angry,” Sherlock finally says.

“Spot on.”

Sherlock’s jaw tightens. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry won’t bring justice for Joseph or Sonia, or what’s left of Victoria. Sorry won’t change the fact that Mycroft cares more about Moriarty’s wellbeing than yours. And sorry really doesn’t even begin to cover that you let me sleep in a house with a woman who once strapped a bomb to my chest, and instead of telling me about it, you had sex with her. Several times, I think. While you let me fuck yet another hit man.”

“You could’ve figured that one, though. He was carrying around a sniper rifle.”

“It’s not funny.”

Sherlock smothers her smile. “I was hoping—I thought maybe—I don’t know.”

“Tell me,” John says.

“I want you beside me, always, holding my hand. Even standing at the gates of Sodom.”

“God smited Sodom because it was filled with idiots and cunts who didn’t deserve the friends they have.”

“How long do you think I have before god smites me?” Sherlock asks.

“Depends on what you do next,” John says. 

“Find Moriarty before Mycroft,” Sherlock says.

“And?”

“And not fuck her again,” Sherlock says. John is so tired, he laughs.

“And?”

“Well, there are no more proper authorities to turn her over to. Mycroft is the top, and she’ll take her back.”

“We’ll figure it out when we find her,” John says, shifting so he can better feel his gun against his back. Sherlock swallows, because she doesn’t want Moriarty dead, but she doesn’t quite want her alive either. The heavy guilt in her stomach grows, and Sherlock pushes the whole thing down.

There is another long moment of silence.

“Did you ever love Victoria?” John finally asks.

“No,” Sherlock says. “I cared for her, but I don’t believe I ever loved her.”

“She’ll go mad in that house alone. With the drugs and the ghosts.”

“She’s checking into rehab as we speak,” Sherlock said. “A posh one, that’s like a resort vacation where you come out sober. Nothing like what I was subjected to.”

John stares at her. “You did that?”

“I said I care for her. Most of Joseph’s money is gone, but the estate will sell for enough to get a flat in London, which is what she always wanted anyway. She’ll find her way. She always did.”

“Will you see her again?” John asks.

“I don’t think so,” Sherlock says. “Not on purpose. She’s part of a past I do not wish to return to.” And it’s true. She cannot smell the poppies or the iron. The hole the memory lives in is collapsing in upon itself.

John sighs. “You’re not a cunt. I always feel like rubbish when I call you a cunt. You’re just disrespectful, and blind, and when all that blood running your massive brain goes down to your genitals, it’s like you’re possessed by the world’s horniest, most irrational demon.”

Sherlock has the good sense to look ashamed.

“I’m not a cunt. I’m the cunt. Of the century.”

“Would you like a trophy with that engraved on it?” John asks.

“It would look nice next to the skull.”

John lets his breath out through his nose, and closes his eyes.

“I know I never loved her,” Sherlock says. “Just like I never loved Mary, or the torturer, or the rugby player, or any of the other ones who tried to kill me. I never loved any of them, because I didn’t feel for them what I feel for you.”

John opens his eyes, blinks at her. His mouth twists in thought.

“I’m not sure how it ended up this way,” he says. “But here I am, holding hands at the gates of Sodom with the cunt of the century, hoping you don’t get us killed via sexual escapade, so we can grow old together.”

“I am sorry that was a shit holiday,” Sherlock says.

“I didn’t even get to go swimming,” John says. 

“You got a blowjob in a wine cellar. Don’t be picky.”

John bursts out laughing, his sleep deprivation getting the better of him. For a long time after, he just watches Sherlock drive, half a dopey grin slopped on his face.

“You’re an outrageously perverted imbecile,” he finally says.

“I don’t think anyone is going to debate you on that,” Sherlock says.

“But I love you too. I really do.”

Sherlock looks at him, then quickly back at the road, because there is no need for John to see even the barest hint of her tears. The tightness that has been living in her chest for days dissipates, and in its place is left a tiny blossoming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SEXY GARBAGE!
> 
> I've never written case fic before, and I am never doing it again. But thank you for reading it anyway. <3


End file.
